Mr. Edward Arnold’s Autumn Announcements. II 
familiar. Mr. Bergson, in whose philosophy the Diarist is steeped, 
somewhere speaks of the disappearance of many problems, as 
thought penetrates beyond and behind their place of origin, into a 
region in which opposites are included and embraced. So Mr. Palmer, 
as he considers the rites and ceremonies, the theologies old and new, 
which the year brings before him, and sets them in relation with the 
latest or the oldest philosophical thinking or the most recent 
scientific generalization, shows that there is in man, if we do but 
take him as a whole and not in artificial sections, a power by which 
faith and knowledge come to be at one. 
The Diary covers nearly ten months—-from July, 1909, to May, 
tg10. It is full of variety, yet has the unity due to one purpose 
strongly held and clearly conceived. A rare sincerity and a fine 
power of expression characterize this striking book. 
The title shows that religion is interpreted in the ‘modernist’ 
fashion ; but modernism is a method, not a system, and the writer 
is more than an exponent of other men’s thoughts. If there are any 
leaders in the great movement to which he is more indebted than he 
is to the movement itself, they are the late Father George Tyrrell (to 
whom the book is dedicated), and Baron Friedrick von Higel. 
HEREDITARY CHARACTERS, 
By CHARLES WALKER, M.D., 
LECTURER IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL. 
One Volume, Demy 8v0. 8s. 6d. net. 
There is probably no scientific subject which excites so deep an 
interest at the present moment as that which is dealt with in Dr. 
Charles Walker’s book. Mankind has always vaguely recognized 
the fact of heredity ; fortes creantur fortibus et bonis somehow or other, 
but it is only recently that more precise information has been sought 
and achieved as to how and to what extent mental and bodily 
characteristics are transmitted from parents to their offspring. 
With this increase of information has come also a realization of the 
immense practical importance of obtaining correct conclusions on 
the subject for persons concerned with almost every department of 
social progress. Such persons will find in Dr. Walker’s book a 
lucid and concise statement of the nature of the problems to be 
solved, the present state of scientific knowledge on the subject, and 
the steps by which that knowledge has been arrived at. Dr. Walker 
makes it clear that he is very much alive to those more remote 
bearings of the inquiry to which we have referred above, but he 
does not himself pursue them. His object has been to enable those 
who are interested in the main question, without being biological 
experts, to form a judgment on it for themselves. 
